Bay Area teams rich in baseball smarts

Beane, Sabean outsmart wealthiest teams' GMs

Updated 11:06 pm, Sunday, February 24, 2013

The A's, specifically GM Billy Beane, deserve a tip of the cap for succeeding with one of the lowest payrolls.

The A's, specifically GM Billy Beane, deserve a tip of the cap for succeeding with one of the lowest payrolls.

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

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San Francisco Giants go through their final workout at Scottsdale Stadium before their first game with the Los Angeles Dodgers tomorrow in Scottsdale Ariz, Friday, Feb. 22, 2013.

San Francisco Giants go through their final workout at Scottsdale Stadium before their first game with the Los Angeles Dodgers tomorrow in Scottsdale Ariz, Friday, Feb. 22, 2013.

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

Image 3 of 5

Alonzo Saballos, 12, of Patterson, flags down some cotton candy during the Oakland A's game against the Blue Jays in Oakland, Calif., Wednesday, May 9, 2012. Saballos was on a field trip with his school, who all sat in the value seats in the upper bowl above home plate. It is the only section of the upper bowl open to fans. less

Alonzo Saballos, 12, of Patterson, flags down some cotton candy during the Oakland A's game against the Blue Jays in Oakland, Calif., Wednesday, May 9, 2012. Saballos was on a field trip with his school, who ... more

Outfield shadows were long as the Detroit Tigers worked out. World Series opponents San Francisco Giants and Detroit Tigers held brief workouts at AT&T park in San Francisco, Calif. Tuesday October 23, 2012. less

Outfield shadows were long as the Detroit Tigers worked out. World Series opponents San Francisco Giants and Detroit Tigers held brief workouts at AT&T park in San Francisco, Calif. Tuesday October 23, ... more

Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle

Bay Area teams rich in baseball smarts

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Tempe, Ariz. -- The great thing about baseball's payroll standings is that they conceal every basic truth about the game. If you want the most prestigious fleet of cars in your neighborhood, spend like crazy. To score the classiest house, don't expect any bargains.

Here's what your big paychecks just might be worth in baseball: zero.

Or to put it another way:

Projected $213 million payroll: the Dodgers, flawed at key positions, privately worried about chemistry, fearful of the Giants' fundamental know-how.

At $210 million: the aging, hobbled Yankees, dreadfully weak in developing pitchers in their system, winners of exactly one World Series in the past 12 years.

At $60 million: the A's, down near the basement, sharing cherished memories of last October and telling their fans (as did one player before Saturday's game against the Angels), "Wasn't that fun?"

Why has the Bay Area become the epicenter of baseball intelligence? Because two distinctly different philosophies - crafting a team around your ballpark and signing valuable players on the cheap - are the respective calling cards of the Giants and A's. One way or the other, it's a path many of their opponents would love to explore. It isn't necessarily financial risk that scares them away (the Giants are at a middle-of-the pack $136 million). It's the notion of being foiled by poor judgment. Either method can be traced back to the game's most essential truths: that scouting, character and basic instincts are the tools that build a winner.

The Giants lean toward the old-school talent search, trusting their eyes over any computer printout. The A's are more heavily invested in analytics. Neither is so stubborn as to ignore all options. Stand Brian Sabean next to Billy Beane and you've got two men who couldn't be more different - but if you were building a team, would you rate them behind any other two big-league executives?

Cranky talk-show callers rip Sabean for not putting enough power hitters into the Giants' lineup. They're probably the same callers who keep calling for management to bring in the fences at AT&T Park. Perhaps it eventually will dawn on people that the Giants have won two World Series in the past three years, but even the national media experts don't quite believe what they have witnessed.

Surely, they claim, the Giants won't get that same production from Angel Pagan or Marco Scutaro. All that faith in Hunter Pence is hard to justify. They can't possibly sustain that brand of pitching (one respected insider rates the Giants' rotation ninth in the big leagues). Whatever it might be, the forecast is for gloom and a loud crash back to earth.

So once again, the Giants will attack people with smarts, the little things, the triples up the alley, the pitching and the defense - all the components necessary to win in a spacious park. Maybe they won't win the whole thing, but there won't be any catastrophic surprises, either, as long as the team is blessed with good health.

The A's are much more difficult to gauge. Beane can't build anything around a ballpark that might be abandoned in future years. The A's don't generate the type of attendance/concession revenue that allows the Giants to sign their best players to lucrative long-term deals. He's forever tinkering, a card shark who won't stop dealing, always intent on picking someone's pocket.

So much about "Moneyball" - both the book and the movie - was a ruse, conveniently ignoring the real reasons behind the A's success at that time (by name: Hudson, Mulder, Zito, Chavez, Tejada). Idle fantasies aside, the players so ably acquired at bargain-basement prices amounted to little more than window dressing.

No, the essence of "Moneyball" philosophy was truly revealed last year, when the A's surprising season was entirely a result of Beane's maneuvering. He was crushed in the media for casting aside proven, popular players for a cast of unknowns, but by season's end, the A's were outclassing people with an all-rookie rotation and a Cuban import, Yoenis Céspedes, whose salary amounts to about one-fifth of Alex Rodriguez's in New York.

The Yankees have 10 players making more money than Chris Young, who became the A's highest-paid player when he was acquired from Arizona. The Dodgers have 11. You could fit 10 of Jed Lowrie's contracts into that of the Angels' Vernon Wells. All of the other new faces - the likes of catcher John Jaso, reliever Fernando Rodriguez and shortstop Hiro Nakajima - came at relatively little cost.

There's no telling if the ever-spinning roulette wheel of Beane's mind will bring home another winner. Nobody understands the radical extremes of baseball fortune - the dregs and the penthouse - quite like the seasoned A's fan. It's just nice to know that such a thing could happen, while so many other teams (rich and otherwise) lurch onward in their decades-long misery.

There is seldom much excitement when the A's play the Giants, whether it's spring training or the heat of summer, for it's a "rivalry" that really hasn't taken hold. It might be worthwhile to pay special attention this year, ordering from the connoisseur's menu and being grateful for the things money can't buy.

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